Starting in August of 2003, the RIAA will begin to sue all public P2P users that "expose" any of their member's copyrighted material. They are also going for a full court press to teach people to always buy their songs from a legitimate source, and therefore keep the RIAA and its members deeply in the green so that they can continue sueing all those who do not legally buy their products. Expect to hear from lots of artists saying "Please don't make me and my children starve because you stole my music instead of buying it!".

That's why they have P2P software being released that hides your IP, even the program doesn't know where it is (don't exactly know how they are doing it, but I'm not a network tech or programmer), so the RIAA can't reverse engineer it (and pay the fine) and start screwing more people.

If the RIAA actually get their way and make all ISP/POS (Point of service) providers have to keep a LOG of all your incoming and outgoing data streams for 7 years CONTINIOUSLY, and which is provided to ALL copyright holders by them just asking... AND at the same time of monitoring every packet you send to see if it is a registered copy-right material... to report you in real time of breaking any copy-right...

Keep in mind that all the security concerns ( DoD, CIA, NSA ) and law enforcement authorities (FBI, Tob and Firearms, NYPD, etc) support this. So they can monitor everything in real time, and look back at what you've been doing in the past. That's the danger... not very strong or realistic at this time, but the more Big Brother and Little Brother team up on the demands that you cannot be trusted and must be patrolled constantly... that unholy union needs to be guarded against.

The RIAA would install a dictatorship if they had the chance...they are just a desperate bunch of people trying to hang on to their power and money by whatever authoritarian means they can conceive...sadly, they have considerable power in the west, especially the plutocratic US...

The great thing is that when America's totalitarian regime grinds into the dirt everybody who uses, has used, and will use P2P software, it may be morally right to share music!

SP

__________________Whether 'tis nobler in the plane to suffer
The asps and adders of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of bitch-ass motherfuckers
And by opposing fuck them up?
-- Samuel L. Jackson as Hamlet